Thursday, January 14, 2016

Update from the GUSHDtech DLCs

We hope you had some time over the break to relax and unwind a bit. This semester has been full of new experiences for us and for so many teachers around the district. It’s been truly inspiring to see the innovative teaching and risk-taking with technology integration over the past semester. As we move toward second semester, we wanted to share a few highlights from the past two months.

MERIT Academy Day of Code - The week of December 7 - 13 was the 2015 Hour of Code event. Hundreds of thousands of classrooms across the world participated in this amazing experience which gave students of all ages the opportunity to learn more about coding and computer science. One very special event in our district occurred at MERIT Academy. We spent a fun-filled morning helping over 20 MERIT students learn coding skills. They even got to participate in a Google Hangout with a former GUHSD student who is currently studying computer science at San Jose State University. The enthusiasm and engagement of the students was fantastic, and we highly encourage you to try Hour of Code with your students! For more information visit our district’s Hour of Code resource page: http://tech.guhsd.net/resources/hour-of-code

Innovation is more than just technology, and we’re seeing it everywhere! - Although our official title is Digital Learning Coach, we get excited when we see any type of innovative learning experiences taking place inour district. On our district’s first annual Innovation Day, April visited the science classroom of Sonia Gahloff at Mount Miguel. Her students were working on calculating the proper settings to determine the correct trajectory of a ball shot out of a Pascoe Long Range Projectile Launcher. It was awesome to see students celebrating when all their hard work paid off with a direct hit on the center row of the target!

Finalizing their calculations

Determining target placement

Success!

Cool Tool Highlight - One technology tool that we’ve seen teachers using with a lot of success is Kahoot! Kahoot is an free online program that engages students with review and practice quizzes. It’s very easy to use and is great for group settings. Students can play on any device with an internet connection. Kahoot is great for a unit review, vocabulary review, reading comprehension checks, or even a quick exit ticket! If you haven’t tried a Kahoot, take a look at our Kahoot resource page for tutorials and example activities.

We’d like to send a huge thank you to all the individual teachers, departments, support staff, and administrators who are supporting technology integration in our district. We can’t wait to what’s coming in the months ahead.